BeoSound 8 comes out with a Bang (& Olufsen)

Bang & Olufsen announced the BeoSound 8 as a speaker dock for your iPhone and more importantly, your iPad. It seems like every day there is a speaker dock for the iPhone released but the compatibility with the iPad makes this one a little different. If you keep most of your music on your iPad, BeoSound 8 is a beauty.

BeoSound 8 offers superb audio quality in a small package. A speaker’s audio quality is influenced by its physical position in a room. BeoSound 8 solves this by integrating a room adaptation switch allows you to adjust the performance to suit the placement of the speakers, be it a corner, against a wall, or standing freely. The three switch positions will primarily change the equalization of the bass channel. This allows the speaker to be placed anywhere without compromising the sound performance.

The BeoSound 8 can connect wirelessly to your PC or Mac using Apple Airport Express or AirTunes. The look is sleek and polished in typical Bang & Olufsen fashion. The body comes in black or white and you can personalise the speaker fronts with different colours to suite your home. The cone shaped speakers hide the depth and provide a breath of fresh of air in a world of box speakers. I like that the BeoSound 8 can be hung on a wall using a wall bracket. If you are lucky enough to own more than one Bang & Olufsen product, you can use one of their intelligent remotes to control all your devices or use the dedicated remote supplied.

To supplement the BeoSound 8, a free BeoPlayer application for the iPhone and iPad will be released in December to allow Internet radio to be played. The paid-for ‘Pro’ version will have a music library browser and alarm clock.

Available from late November at £900, it hurts the wallet. For that price, I would have liked a few more features. Perhaps the full version of the BeoPlayer included? Composite video output to allow video through the TV? The BeoSound 8 definitely makes a statement. But is the price of that statement worth it?